The air is thick with steam, a film of condensation on the
white-washed walls, the painted ceiling, on the slippery, wet linoleum floor. The single-pane sash window is fogged with
mist. There’s a maroon coloured bath towel,
and a bundle of saturated clothing discarded alongside the big, grey-green copper
bath tub, supported by four great brass feet.
In the bathroom mirror someone has scrawled bath time in toothpaste using their fingers, the words bath time illuminated by the shaving
light, casting a soft, subterranean glow through the cloud of vapours rising
from the bath tub.
On a thin glass shelf underneath the bathroom mirror there
is an ashtray filled with moist ash and cigarette ends, and a half-finished
tumbler of cheap red wine, fermenting in the damp. The sink bowl has lime scale residue around
the plug hole, there are scraps of left over blue tissue paper flecked with blood, and in the soap dish, a razor blade.
Attached to the painted ceiling is a steel bath rail, and
from it hangs a faded yellow bath curtain, shrouding one half of the bath tub. Behind the shroud is his
fleshy silhouette, lying with his bare back to you, and with both bare arms
resting on the sides of the bath tub.
The taps have not been shut off, and there is a steady drip from the
taps into the soap-sudded bath water.
Time slows. You catch
your breath a moment.
Drip, drip,
drip drip.
drip drip.
You notice the slowly evaporating impression of his
footprints on the slippery, wet linoleum floor.
Drip, drip,
drip drip.
drip drip.
You smell for the first time the sweetness of his tobacco smoke hanging suspended in the thick, steamy air.
Drip, drip,
drip drip.
drip drip.
You wonder why he always comes back to you, why he ever left
you in the first place.
Drip, drip
drip drip.
drip drip.
Then, as you reach to pull back the bath curtain, you wake in
a patch of sweat, find your reading light still burning, and the early morning
raindrops sliding like slow, silent tears down the bedroom skylight above the unmade bed, where you - wrapped
in your stained bath robes - have been plumbing the depths of another uneasy
sleep.
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